Things I Dashed Off Over The Last Week --

TRYING TO CATCH UP ----

The Donnas – They’ve toned down the skankiness and polished the music, but they still make the kind of dumb 70’s inspired guitar-based rock and roll that I love. They kind of remind me of a female Ramones – the Ramones, late in their career, tried to polish their sound a bit to get a wider audience (it didn’t work; ironically, their songs are all over commercials and soundtracks now). It’s probably a little twisted that I’m glad my 5 year old daughter knows all the words to “Fall Behind Me.”

Lindsey Lohan – “Rumors” – I HATE this song. I HATE this video. After some semi-cool ROCK songs from the “Freaky Friday” and “Confessions Of A Teen-age Drama Queen,” now she puts out this sub-par Britney tripe. That’s right – sub-par Britney – Do you know how crappy you have to be in order to be not even as good as Britney Spears? Britney’s current hit is a remake of “My Prerogative” – Lindsey’s song apes the sentiment of that song and even has a line almost identical to “why won’t they just let me be?” Listen, Ms. Lohan, if you want people to leave you alone, then get out of the entertainment business and go spray perfume on unsuspecting people at Dillard’s. I-WON’T –MISS-YOU.

UPDATE: She’s essentially naked on the cover of the new Entertainment Weekly. That’ll make everyone leave you alone, Lindsey.

Skye Sweetnam – Ms. Sweetnam, truly, the field is already overcrowded with Lindsey, Hilary, Ashlee, Vanessa, Avril, etc. I’ve only heard one of your songs – the one about kicking the Coke machine – but I can’t tell that you add anything to the mix. Go away.

Yellowcard – Thy fiddle doth not distinguish thou from all the other pop punk bands.

Simple Plan – I should recuse. This is my 9 year old son’s favorite band. I was glad that he seemed to be into rock music. His favorite song by Simple Plan is “Perfect.” Fair enough. Then I listened to the words of “Perfect” – it’s about a kid who doesn’t think he can ever measure up to what his father wants him to be. Uh oh – son and I apparently need to talk. This also marked a turning point for me – generally in these parents vs. kids type songs, I always identified with the kid. Now I’m the dad! I’m the bad guy in “My Generation” – in all those Pink Floyd songs – in all those KoRn songs – hell, even in Fresh Prince’s “Parents Just Don’t Understand.” This was depressing. Anyway, these guys get a pass that they ordinarily wouldn’t get from me – aided by the fact that they were on “Scooby Doo” yesterday, joining the immortal ranks of Mama Cass, Jerry Reed, Sonny & Cher, and KISS.

*Another “dad” milestone: I went to the LA Guns-Firehouse-Warrant-Dokken-Ratt debacle in Monroe a year or so ago. This is the kind of show where the “metal chicks” come out in full force to try to out-do one another with outrageous costumes. So, while we’re all sitting there waiting for the show to start (it started two hours late), this girl walks by in this very revealing leather outfit. At best, she was seventeen. Instead of thinking how hot she was, my thoughts were, “ I’ll bet your dad doesn’t know you’re out wearing that get-up. You need to get your ass home and put some clothes on.” I found this startling, also.

Lazyboy – “Underwear Goes Inside The Pants” – I’ve only heard this once, but it was different and interesting – might wear thin after repeated listenings, though. Over a slamming rock beat, some guy who sounds like Denis Leary essentially rants and raves. The part that caught my attention was when he said a homeless guy approached him for money. He said , “Why should I give him any money? He’s just going to use it for drugs or alcohol – but then I thought to myself, Hell, that’s what I’m going to use it for – why should I pass judgment?”

P.S. I just checked these guys out on the Internet – apparently, they are some sort of multimedia collective featuring some of the people from Aqua (“Barbie Girl”). Hmmm.

U2 on “Saturday Night Live” – they got to do 3 songs and their last song was their very first hit, “I Will Follow.” They played it during the show’s closing credits; Bono and the Edge were out in the audience; the rest of the cast were onstage and seemed to be enthralled – it was a great moment from a show that no longer has that many great moments.

*Henry Rollins has a new movie review show on IFC – haven’t seen it yet, but I really want to. I love Henry Rollins – I saw him with Black Flag in Little Rock 19 years ago (damn!….). I’ve got his “Get In The Van” as an audiobook and that is one great masterwork. I don’t always agree with him (he seems to have a profound dislike for David Letterman, and I love Letterman), but you can bet he won’t pull any punches in reviewing films.

The Peter Sellers movie on HBO the other night was pretty good – Geoffrey Rush did a great job. If the movie was accurate, then Sellers was a real prick.

I try to keep up with hip-hop and know who’s who(m?) (especially for purposes of being a dj), but it just doesn’t generally have the same visceral kick for me as guitar based rock. So, I generally feel like I’m behind the curve on hip-hop knowledge. Imagine my surprise when Entertainment Weekly came out with the list of the all time essential hip-hop albums and I had most of them. True, they are catching some flack for some of their choices, but I feel a little more hip now for my age. I was around 17 when the so called first rap song came out – “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugarhill Gang – and that was basically a novelty song. The early rap song that first gave me chills was “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash. After that, I mainly paid attention to rap when it incorporated rock guitar (which is why I liked Run D.M.C. when they first appeared – for “Rock Box” and then, later, for “King of Rock”) or when it was really dirty – I still have the first Luke Skywalker cassette from around 1987. Public Enemy was a revelation, but even with Public Enemy, my favorite tracks were “Sophisticated Bitch” (with Vernon Reid of Living Color playing guitar) and the remake of “Fight The Power” with Anthrax. Rock radio wouldn’t play “Fight The Power” when it was released – they would be all over it now. My guess is that the folks at Entertainment Weekly who compiled the list are probably around my age.

This is interesting – spell check tells me that it should be “hip-hop” rather than “hip hop”. Spell check is hipper than I am.

Dimebag Darrell – I was never a big Pantera fan; I couldn’t name five of their songs if I had to. Their glory days occurred when I had moved on to alternative rock. You don’t have to be a fan, though, to get chills as to the manner in which he died. As I type this, all I know is what I read on the Internet today at work. I haven’t made it home to see any footage, etc. While standing in the crowds at rock shows, I have often thought how easy it would be for someone to seriously injure or kill a performer. While it is true that security at concerts seems to be more strict now, that isn’t the case at clubs. There will be a lot of talk about the need for beefing up security at club shows now. Hell, I piss someone off every day in my line of work, but I don’t think they are going to start putting in metal detectors at the country club and in the Pines Room and at rodeo dances.

UPDATE: I listened to XLM on the way home from work, the “liquid metal” channel. This is the channel that mostly features bands I have never heard of (Pissing Razors, anyone?). Most of them sound like what would happen if dogs barked over jackhammers. Anyway, they were playing all Pantera music, which is actually more melodic than standard XLM fare. The stoner sounding dj and his female sidekick would occasionally interject and talk about what had happened to Dimebag Darrell –“dude, that’s just totally fucked up”, etc. and they would take phone calls. None of the callers were all that coherent but it was still vaguely touching – this has obviously greatly impacted the “metal community.”

I am inexplicably still a KISS fan and I have seen them more times than I have seen any other act…but DAMN! Gene Simmons makes it hard to continue to be a fan. His A&E biography last night was a horrible piece of self-indulgent crap. I always liked Paul Stanley, better, anyway – Paul is a true legendary frontman, in the grand tradition of Mick Jagger, Roger Daltrey, Steven Tyler, and David Lee Roth.

Grammy nominations: I usually like the Grammys. The nominations seem to adequately mix popularity and artistic merit, unlike the Lowest Common Denominator …er…American Music Awards. This year sounds pretty good. Kanye West got the most nominations and I hear that his album is good; I have only heard the singles. My biggest problem with him is that he admits that he purposely structured the album with an eye toward Grammy nominations. I also thought that he was rather petty when he complained about not winning any American Music Awards. Loretta Lynn got several nods for her great album – I actually bought that cd, and I don’t buy very many these days. Ray Charles was an obvious choice. I’m not much of an Usher fan, but he was an obvious choice, too. Green Day got their due for what is reportedly a great album. Slipknot, Hatebreed, and the venerable Motorhead are in there, too, as is Modest Mouse and Franz Ferdinand. Should be an interesting show. Best New Artist nominees:

Los Lonely Boys – decent music; their time in the sun won’t last very long, but they’ll probably play clubs in the South for the next 20 years.

Maroon 5 – I’ve talked about them here before and have little else to say

Joss Stone – great voice, but I haven’t really heard anything by her yet that really knocks me out. I much prefer the White Stripes version of “Fell In Love With A Girl” over her remake.

Kanye West – probably has this category sewn up

Gretchen Wilson – won’t win because country artists don’t win in this category and she has raked in enough awards already